


Love Is Layered

by AstroGirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 09:10:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their love is complicated, and about to get even more so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Is Layered

**Author's Note:**

> This is AU from sometime early in S2, and contains spoilers through "The Crocodile."

Their first time, he seems almost reluctant, asking over and over again whether she's certain, until she proves to him she knows exactly what she wants. (She wants to be touched, of course. To be real, to know he's real. To love and be loved. She doesn't think that is difficult to understand.) Part of it is him being gentlemanly, which she finds adorable, but part is clearly him not quite believing she could want him, which she simply won't indulge. Of course, there are other considerations, as well. But if anything comes of it, she tells herself, it will be a child of True Love, and how could that ever be a bad thing? This is a new land, and he is a new man, and she is ready, she thinks, for any kind of new life. For whatever the future might bring.

**

After he tries to kill Regina, once she's ready to let him touch her again, she researches her options. 

It's a tiny act of courage to present the box of condoms to the sneezing man behind the counter. She knows she's flushing red (because her father _tried_ to raise her to be a proper lady, at least) and she half expects a knowing smirk, or even for him to know who she is, to make some disparaging comment on her choice of lovers. (And what will she say if he does? "He's not a monster" seems, suddenly, like far too weak a defense.) But he says nothing, and when her eyes meet his, she sees a lost, sad look on his face, as if he's not quite sure who _he_ is, never mind anyone else, and she finds all her embarrassment lost in sympathy.

Rumple begins using them without being asked, when she leaves the box by the bed, and she cannot tell whether he is saddened or relieved.

**

It's not until after she's left that bed for her own in the apartment above the library that she realizes she needn't have bothered. Which is longer than it should have taken, but after twenty-eight years in a room with no calendars, where the windowless days bleed seamlessly one into another, a woman tends to lose track of her own rhythms as well as everything else.

There comes a moment, though, when she's sure, as sure as if she could look inside herself and see what's hidden there, beneath her skin. 

"Oh," she says in a small voice. Belle lives every day surrounded by words, but they all seem to have deserted her now, and all she can say is, _Oh_.

She curls her arms around her stomach and sits down hard on her narrow, tidy bed. She already knows it's possible to feel both love and fear at the same time. She knows that very well. But she had no idea it was possible to feel them both so _much_.

**

It's harder, somehow, than telling him she would go with him was. Even harder than telling him she was leaving. But it's right, and it's necessary, so she gathers her resolve and goes to his shop, turns the "open" sign to "closed" behind her, and says them flat out, the two words he needs to hear.

It seems to take him a moment to understand those words, and even when he does, she can see he has no idea what to do with them. 

"You're..." He comes out from behind the counter, his hand reaching out towards her midsection, not quite daring to touch her. "Are you certain?"

That question again. It makes her want to smile and cry at the same time, and she isn't entirely sure why. "Yes," she says. "Yes, I'm certain."

"What..." He swallows. "What do you need me to do?"

He looks... He looks exactly like she feels. Confused and uncertain and hopeful and frightened, and _human_. So human. She's never understood why she's the only one who sees it.

"I don't know," she says, because she always tries, even now, to be honest with him.

"Anything you need," he says, and the almost desperate earnestness in his voice breaks her heart. "Anything at all, Belle." 

"Just..." Her voice cracks a little as she thinks of all the things she's ever needed from him, all the things they might or might not still have. "Be a good father? Be a good _man_."

"I'll try," he says. She thinks she can see moisture gathering in his eyes. "I will. Believe me, I will try."

She bites her lip to keep it from trembling and reaches out to touch his arm, hovering on the edge of pulling him into a hug. "I believe you," she says, but she can hear the tremor in her voice.

She does believe him, though. He loves her, she knows that, for all his bad choices. And he will love his child. She is as certain of that as she has ever been of anything.

But... But she remembers that conversation in the library, the one that touched her so deeply. The one whose implications she didn't fully understand at the time, but has thought too much about since. This man is capable of loving his child enough to rip an entire world apart, enough to steal everyone else's children, everyone else's love away.

She has always seen the goodness beneath his dark exterior. But she is only just now realizing, as a hopeful, protective warmth begins to dawn in his eyes, that wrapped inside that goodness is a love far more fierce and dangerous than his hate.

She is, she tells herself, going to have to be very, very brave now. For all of them.


End file.
